


An Astonishing Resistance To Memory

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 08:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4659780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something has to give. Something always does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Astonishing Resistance To Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Remember the Name](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4242336) by [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname). 



> This was going to be a treat in the FemmeRemix, but I couldn't get it done in time.

Name, birthdate, birthplace.

Current president of the United States, current director of S.H.I.E.L.D, current roster of the Avengers Initiative.

Home address, family members, relationship status—

\--

Rogers brings her peonies in a pot and smiles as he puts them on the table in front of her. “I know you said you can kill plants just by being in the same room as them, but I’ll look after these if it comes down to it.”

Maria looks from the puffy magenta blossoms to Captain America’s smiling face, and feels the gap between memory and reality loom.

“Maria?”

“I—” She doesn’t know how to say it. Is relieved she doesn’t have to as his expression goes careful and sober.

“You don’t remember.”

“No.” Then because she needs to hear it out loud, “We were…together?”

He looks down and away, the long lashes shuttering his gaze. “Together? No.” A faintly bitter smile ghosts across his lips. “You didn’t want us public.”

\--

Phil Coulson is alive, Alexander Pierce is dead, Peggy Carter has dementia.

Missions she executed, missions she participated in, missions she ran.

Missions she was captured in.

–

She scrolls through her list of contacts; matching names to faces and faces to memories.

Pauses at the end, and scrolls back again, looking for a name that she has lodged in her head and which she can’t find. She has no images of him, no memories—

Summer sun glinting off sandy blond hair as he wrestles her up against the wooden railing of the pier. Eyes like a winter sky gleaming as they make love. An easy smile in his eyes as he strides through the crowds towards her, an easy laugh rumbling in his chest as his lips brush her cheek—

S.H.I.E.L.D isn’t all she is; it doesn’t have to be – she _can_ have it all—

Blood in a motel room, and Barton’s hand on her shoulder, the bruising grip a kindness of sorts.

Something has to give; in this case, frail dreams and fragile heart.

–

Blood in a metal box—

No, her mind in a metal box—

No, her  _heart_ in a metal box, screaming—

–

The bruising grip on her shoulder drags her back into the hospital bed and out of the metal box of her nightmares.

“Maria!”

There’s a moment when she looks into the eyes of a dead man. “Nathan?” And sees the shock and hurt in blue eyes a second before she names him: “Steve.”

“You were dreaming.”

Metal boxes, burning against her skin. Metal boxes, keeping her enclosed. Metal boxes, holding her mind a prisoner as much as her body.

“Nightmares,” she manages at last. “Not dreams.”

She sees the question in his eyes, on his lips. He doesn’t voice it, and she’s glad of the reprieve. But he doesn’t let go of her, simply sliding the hand on her shoulder down, rubbing her arm in what’s probably supposed to be comfort.

It’s not.

–

Why did she start an affair with Captain America?

She’s Maria Hill, ambition bitch of S.H.I.E.L.D; what the hell was she thinking?

It’s nearly two weeks of daily visits before Maria realises: she didn’t start an affair with Captain America, she fell in love with Steve Rogers.

–

The physical therapy is hell. Yes, everything’s there and the docs assure her it will work properly again, although the scars will probably never quite fade, and her shoulders might ache a little more in the cold, but she needs to do the therapy, to remind her muscles of how it all goes.

It’s pain and it aches and it’s exhausting, but Maria pushes herself because she has to – because she needs to get back into the field; without her work what is she? So she reclaims her body, reclaims her life, reclaims that part of who she used to be.

If only certain memories could be reclaimed as easily.

Her dreams are scarlet pain and black despair, and she wakes from them to tangled and sweat-soaked sheets, her teeth locked around her screams. Once, she wakes to Roger’s hands on her shoulders, shaking her awake, his voice calling her name over and over and over. And she shoves his hands away, drags herself out of bed, and doesn’t stop backing away until she’s up against the cold infirmary wall.

The medical staff rush in as Rogers’ hands drop to his sides and his expression grows carefully remote.

_You wanted this,_ she thinks. Her breath catches, like a sharp stab of pain in her chest.

It takes her several seconds to respond to the medical personnel.

–

Maria was the bitch-queen of world security for a reason; her head over her heart, the professional over the personal, the mission before everything.

Steve Rogers changed that for her. And she changed that for him, too.

Which is why she doesn’t remember them.

–

He doesn’t come to visit her the next day, or the day after, or the day after that.

_You knew it was never going to last,_ Maria reminds herself as she works her way along the physiotherapy bars and ignores the burning pain in her shoulders, in her chest.  _That’s why you wanted the relationship quiet._

In the shower, afterwards, she turns her face into the spray and lets the water rinse off the sweat that grimes her skin. If it also washes away the sting of salt beneath her lashes, then nobody knows it but her. Then she dries herself off, dresses slowly, and goes out to the sunwards porch. She’ll sit in the sun, start reading her reports again, and get her brain back into world security.

It’s all she’s good for now.

But when she reaches the porch, Steve’s sitting there with a bunch of poppies on his lap, scarlet blossoms bright against his shirt as he pours a second glass of water out.

Maria stops in the doorway, her fingers scraping against the frame as their eyes meet and he stands.

“How is it today?”

“Better. At least, they’re still making encouraging noises, so I’m not beyond hope.”

He smiles and offers her the bunch of poppies. “For you. These ones are supposed to die eventually.”

She takes them, cellophane crackling under her fingers like snapping fire, the bright heads bobbing at her in nodding encouragement as she drags her courage together in trembling scraps. “I made myself forget.”

–

Maria didn’t want them public.

Nobody was to know – nobody they didn’t completely and absolutely trust.

So when she was captured, all she had to do was not betray him before her body betrayed her.

–

After she tells him, he sits and looks out into the bright sunlight that spills across the grassy lawn. And she waits for comment, for judgement, and for abandonment. This ending was written long before she made her entrance into the tale.

At last, he shifts in his chair. “You want me to walk away.”

“It’s safer.”

“For you or for me?” Steve watches her hesitate over the answer. “Would anyone ever be safe for us – for me? Was it safe for you to love Nathan?”

Not in the end. “I don’t want to be responsible for your capitulation.”

“You won’t be,” he tells her. “I will. You fired on the Insight helicarriers at the Triskelion, Maria. You made your choice. At least trust me to make my own.”

“Can you separate the personal from the important?”

“If I can’t, do I have any right to carry the shield?” He waits as the silence draws out, as she fights what she thinks is right against what her heart wants. “Even if I walked away, Maria, I couldn’t promise not to care.”

This time it’s her will that gives way.

–

Maria wakes sharply in darkness, a large, warm body pressed up against her back. Her mind fumbles for a name amidst the scent of his skin against hers.

“Steve?”

His mouth finds her nape, kisses it. “Yes.”


End file.
